….at least not by the next pope, and quite possibly not for a very long time, if ever?

That’s the thinking of Amateur Brain Surgeon’s post quoting the tendency in Western society going back several hundred years to first experience some great revolution that runs counter to the society as previously established, and then have “conservatives” come in shortly later and claim whatever revolutionary change accomplished a few years ago is now a dear part of “tradition” and can never be done away with. That would be too radical! The post hinges on this quote from Chesterton, of which I was previously unfamiliar (I add emphasis and comments):

“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.”

Anti-lock Braking System Amateur Brain Surgeon goes on to say:

Sure, the Annulment Reform means the process will become the abattoir of marriage but we also know it will not be ditched by the next Pope. [Well. JPII did undo a very similar annulment process operative in the US in the 70s with the ’83 Code of Canon Law. But that was overturning an abuse by a local group of bishops, not a positive papal act. I have to say ABS is probably right, there is almost no chance of the next pope overturning this “reform,” but he might, if we are blessed with a different kind of pope, undo some of its more egregious measures. Overall, though, no, I doubt the next pope will repeal it, unless there is some kind of miracle]

As Mr. Kenneth Jones noted,In 1968 there were 338 annulments, in 2002 there were 50,000.

Get used to it, Trads, these reforms will be defended by the ultramontanes and the conservatives in the Hierarchy will not cast out these execrable reforms for that would be too radical. [And thus, for 500 years, the Revolution has gone from one advance to the next, with very few setbacks]

Just think about how these events happen – revolutionaries destroy the Roman Rite and impose an anthropocentric happy meal for women and children upon us and then a Pope is elected who could have – he had the power – simply restored the Real Mass and suppressed the Lil’ Licit Liturgy – but he didn’t.

If you can’t hear the revolutionaries celebrating the permanency of their victory, then you are spiritually deaf.

The Synod will do something that will, in practice, undermine the permanent doctrines of the One True Holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church and those reforms will become permanent. [I prefer not to give them the benefit of the doubt by using the word reform. I either use scare quotes, or I use other, more accurate terms: novelties, revolutionary changes, etc.]

Look, what G.K. Chesterton had to say about the political world is also applicable to The Church for it has become anthropocentric and not only open to change but it is populated by progressive prelates sedulously soliciting change.

Aye, there’s the rub. I think that’s an extremely significant comment. We are often told by generally well meaning souls that applying political terms to the Church is incorrect, because the Church is beyond mere politics, and in saner times that has been correct. But as ABS notes, the Church has been thoroughly infiltrated by individuals of a very worldly sort, and even more, profoundly political actors (the left generally believing the personal is the political, and thus all aspects of life are political) who are committed to enacting a culturally and politically progressive/leftist agenda in the Church. Thus, the political language becomes more apt every day.

Be that as it may, whether its political or cultural, progressivism or modernism or all of the above, the Church has been besieged by agents of the Revolution within her walls for decades now. This is an unprecedented development and the millions (I pray its millions) of faithful are still very much working out how to most effectively respond. While we do so, the Revolution tends to advance by leaps and bounds. The 60s/70s saw a period of enormous revolutionary advance, with the 80s-00s now seeming to be more a period institutionalization of those changes rather than any kind of real retrenchment (the awesome Summorum Pontificum aside). We see how easily all the relatively orthodox encyclicals of JPII and Benedict (yes, I know, now is not the time to parse their doctrinal content) are set aside and the Revolution resumes its course. I like to think – I probably need to think – that eventually this revolutionary generation will die off in sufficient numbers for a general restoration to get underway. But who knows?!? Every year takes us further from the Church That Was and further into the Church That Is. These two are not the same, and the basis for Restoration probably slips a bit with the advance of each year.

Sorry to be a downer, but I think we need to be realistic. We need to find the best communities we can to sustain ourselves because we are in for a very long, and very unpleasant, ride.

WOW. What a blasphemous statement. What an insult to Our Lady and true womanhood. It’s an insult to women everywhere, really. What is being said in reality is: “Mary’s humility, patience, and constant correspondence with Grace are unsuitable to revolutionary ends. Thus, she is not an adequate example for feminists and other leftists committed to working revolution in the Church and world.”

“Mary can not be the reference point for the advancement of women in the Church.” In reality, Bianchi is a layman. He gave an interview to the daily newspaper La Repubblica, which was published last September 9th. Bianchi was appointed by Pope Francis as Consultor in July 2014 of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. [He must be popular with his ecumenical friends. Mary is the reference point for us all, but most especially for women, of whom she represents the ideal. Mary is the holiest pure-human to ever live. She was not God and man, but she corresponded with grace at all times and remains the only sinless person to ever live. Only a demonically blinded fool, and a thoroughgoing leftist ideologue, could make such an asinine statement. And yet he holds an important post in this pontificate]

La Repubblica published an interview under the title “The church of the future,” of Enzo Bianchi by Sylvia Roochney. Bianchi explained it: “In the Church there are good intentions, but about there are unreal expectations about women: The model Maria, Virgin and Mother, can not be the reference point for the advancement of women in the church. The fashionable, subliminally alleged idea that Mary was more important than St. Peter, is a stupid idea, just as the wheels of a car would be more important than the steering wheel.” [We can see a theme among many associated with this pontificate, that the Christian ideal, adhered to and promoted for 2000 years, is now suddenly become “too hard” and “unrealistic.” You know who also said that? The Arians. And the protestants. And many other heretical sects]

Next Bianchi said, “We are not yet able to take unequivocal equality between men and women seriously. The path of the Church is still very far, because even today men solely are at the decision-levers, while women are restricted to low services,” said Enzo Bianchi. [If one considers raising up new Saints to God, or being a holy nun, or teaching children the traditional Faith, a “low service,” one is seriously sick in the mind. This man, like all leftists, appears obsessed with marxist power dynamics. Those dynamics are, in fact, how they create envies with which to divide society.]

That the Magisterium says the exact opposite, does not move “Prior” Bianchi. Bianchi wants to flatter Pope Francis with his sudden emphasis of the apostle Peter, although he himself called for the “overcoming” of the papacy “in a spirit of ecumenism” in 2013…..

…..Bianchi is known for his heterodox statements: Last August, he claimed that “family is a form that is given by society”. Specifically, he said, so that the family could be changed by the society.

There’s been a lot of “volpi’s” get into the hen house of the Church lately, no? Bianchi had better be careful, however, Our Lady, the hammer of heretics, is not one I would want to offend.

From Saint Alphonsus Liguori, on Christ’s defeat of Death by His own dying. I thought much of the below illuminating. Hopefully you will, too. From The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ:

St. John writes that our Redeemer, before He breathed His last, bowed His head. He bowed His head as a sign that He accepted death with full submission from the hands of His Father, and thus accomplished His humble obedience: “He humbled Himself, and was made obedient to death, even the death of the cross” (Phil ii:8).

………St. Athanasius says that death did not dare to approach to take away life from the Author of Life; wherefore it was needed that He Himself, by bowing His head (which alone He could then move), should call death to approach and slay Him. On St. Matthew’s words, Jesus again crying with a loud voice, yielded up the Ghost, St. Ambrose remarks that the Evangelist used the expression yielded up to show that Jesus did not die of necessity, or through the violence of the executioners, but because He voluntarily chose to die. He chose willingly to die, to save man form the eternal death to which He was condemned.

This was foretold by the prophet Osee in the words, I will deliver them from the hand of death, from death I will redeem them. O death, I will be thy death. O hell, I will be thy bite (Osee xiii:14). This is testified by the Holy Fathers St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Gregory; and St. Paul………applies the prophecy literally to Jesus Christ, who, with his death delivered us from death, that is, from hell.

How, then, was Jesus Christ the death of death? O death, I will be thy death! Because by His death our Savior conquered death, and destroyed the death which had resulted from sin. Therefore, the Apostle writes, Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is thy victory? Where, O death, is thy sting? The sting of death is sin (1 Cor xv:54). Jesus, the Divine Lamb, by His death destroyed sin, which was the cause of our death; and this was the victory of Jesus, since by dying He banished sin from the world, and consequently delivered it from eternal death, to which all the human race was subjected. [All of which is absolutely true, but must be properly understood. Christ did banish sin’s total dominance over man by His death, but we can let it back in by our own tendencies to evil. Thus sin and vice are still rampant today. Christ made eternal life possible for all IF – and this IF means all – they live in accord with His Will as revealed through His Church. Christ made salvation for all possible, but not assured. Over time, as men’s hearts have hardened and fewer and fewer live according to God’s will for us, sin has crept back into the world more and more, and fewer and fewer are saved]

To this corresponds that other text of the Apostle, That through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil (Heb ii:14). Jesus destroyed the devil, that is, the power of the devil, who, through sin, had the power of death; that is, who had the power to inflict temporal and eternal death on all the sons of Adam who were corrupted with sin. This was the victory of the Cross, on which Jesus, the Author of Life, dying, by His death acquired life for us. Whence the Church sings of the cross that by it “Life endured death, and by death brought forth life.” [Is this all making sense? To me, it’s beautiful, but also tragic, as we so poorly correspond to the infinitely valuable gift that has been made available to us, for the asking]

And all this was the work of the Divine Love, which brought this Priest to sacrifice to the Eternal Father the life of His only-begotten Son for the salvation of men; for which reason the Church also sings, “The Priest, who is love, sacrifices the limbs of His tender body.”

And therefore St. Francis de Sales cries out, “Let us look upon this Divine Savior stretched upon the Cross, as upon the altar of His love, where He dies for love of us. Ah, why do we not cast ourselves in spirit upon the same, that we may die upon the Cross with Him who has been willing to die for love of us?

Yes, O sweet Redeemer, I embrace Thy Cross; and holding it in my embrace, I would live and die ever lovingly kissing Thy feet, wounded and pierced for me.

————End Quote———–

I do want to make certain folks don’t get tripped up on the above, thinking that Liguori is arguing, protestant-like, that since Christ’s “once for all time” victory over sin, all we have to do is “name it and claim it” to be saved. I saw that wicked lie on a local tele-evangelist show recently (in fact, it was Pope Francis’ favorite, Kenneth Copeland, quoting Scripture out of context and chastising his audience to “have faith” by making donations and “claim” their health and wealth. What a shyster).

Liguori is speaking in a general sense, but individual men still are subject to both Original and actual sin. I think that’s the key distinction to keep in mind.

So the topic of which pro-life groups are really committed wholeheartedly to defending the sanctity of life from conception to natural death came up last week. There is also the allied topic of which of those are committed to the restoration of the Faith. The latter significantly narrows down the list. I’ll provide two lists, those which to my knowledge correspond to the former and latter, and then some which are good regarding pro-life issues themselves but perhaps have some problems with false ecumenism or things of that nature.

So, first up, the completely reliable pro-life groups who also get the need for liturgical reform/Church restoration:

There may be more, these are the only groups I can unequivocally recommend at present.

So now a lot of folks may be saying, what about this group! What about that one! They’re really strong, aren’t they?

When one begins to dig a bit deeper on some of the groups below, problems can emerge. They may fight for the right to life from conception to natural death, but they also support and advance other things which may actually militate against that pro-life stand. For instance, if a pro-life group highlights the work of protestants who maintain that contraceptive use is completely moral and admissible, does that not undermine their own opposition to abortion, since contraception creates the environment in which abortion flourishes? Or they may be weak on the finer points of end-of-life definitions or organ donation.

I won’t point out the problems as I perceive them. I’ll just say that the groups below are generally good on the life issues and some others but may have some weaknesses in other areas such as having a recognition of the solution to the crisis in the Church, adoption of certain post-conciliar novelties, etc. You can make your own decision or do your own research to determine whether or not to support these groups. For me, they do not have the total freedom from concerns that the groups above do.

Finally, a few pro-life groups I don’t recommend for a variety of reasons:

National Right to LifeTexas Alliance for Life
Pro-Life Across America
Most diocesan CPLCs. They feel it urgent to work with every self-identified pro-life group, including protestant and some visibly problematic ones, and so refuse to take the proper stands on key matters like contraception, organ donation, hard and fast end of life definitions, opposition to organ donation, and the like.

If there are groups not on the list, it’s because I don’t know enough about them to comment. I would say, overall, that most pro-life groups have problematic aspects when it comes to things like the crisis in the Faith, contraception, vaccines derived from fetal cell lines, and the like. That is why the list of really solid is very short.

I fear this post will start a major row with supporters of some of the groups not receiving my unequivocal support take exception. We’ll see. My intention is not to hurt them but to help others to make the best decision possible. Understand these are my personal appraisals and not declarations from on high, so their value is necessarily limited.

Not that that won’t keep some folks from getting steamed, most likely.